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Using Windows w/ 100% Open-Source Software?
XRayX asks: "I'm currently installing a Windows 98 PC and I'm trying to install just Open Source Software (except Windows and Drivers). Okay, there's Freeamp, GIMP, Mozilla, OpenDivX, VirtualDub, Audacity, Abiword, Tuxracer and FlaskMPEG for Windows; but I'm still missing some good Open Source Tools for Windows: a picture viewer and a GUI Zip-program. Can anyone help?" While an interesting thing to try, I don't think it will be as easy as it sounds. How many others of you have tried to pull this off and how successful were you?
There's a list of open source image viewers here
While it is more than just a picture viewer, the Gimp runs on Windows and might fit your needs.
My question is, unless you are doing as a challenge, why use Windows at all? I thougth the only reason to run Windows was to support all the closed source apps that have no viable alterative in the open source arena. But then again, I'm sure you have your reasons.
...available at http://www.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/WiZ.html
I've modified my copy to make the toolbar buttons larger and more colorful and fix a few annoyances.
One benefit that hasn't been mentioned is cost. While I may never make modifications to the source of the GIMP, I also will never fork out $500 (or whatever the cost is) for Adobe Photoshop. So I can use the GIMP instead of pirating a copy of Photoshop (come on, how many of you occasional Photoshop users actually paid for it yourselves???) So, I don't need the source, but since it is open source, I can "afford" to use it!
So good an idea in fact that it's been had before :)
I used to be subscribed to the list, which was win32@lists.debian.org, but I can't find an archive of it, and i don't know if it still exists.
If you search around, you may be able to find some posts describing an package repository of .deb packages built for cygwin or mingw.
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
Leave some of those computers using Windows. Maybe even throw a Mac into the mix. Getting them and the others to network together and play nice with each other might be a big headache but you'll learn a lot that you can use in the real world where such "mixed marriages" might be unavoidable.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
With instructions, I assume.
Mind you, I don't think I would want my mom installing packages on my Linux machine either--though she has done it with help from me over the phone when I needed something remote and I couldn't be there to do it.
When and if we ever get the GNUstep package installation software finished, it should become even easier to install binary software than it is with Windows "wizards".
Thanks for the pointers. I've played with Cygwin/XFree86 and it took over the whole screen - once it can share the screen, letting some windows operate under X and others run native Windows apps, it will be very useful. I look forward to a GNOME on Windows port using Cygwin/XFree86, to avoid the need for commercial software such as U/WIN and most X servers.
One key point is that many Windows to *nix porting tools exist, including freeware options such as WINE. Not so many Unix to Windows porting tools exist, and fewer are freeware - until they are as good as the Windows to Unix tools, the temptation is for software companies to write to Windows APIs and then port to Unix.
A big obstacle for adopting open source in the Windows world is lack of understanding of the benefits. The Windows culture is all about commercialware and shareware; even 'freeware' means binary-only software. Providing an easy to install set of open source tools for Windows is not a bad idea - it would be much easier for newbies to experiment with this, and if it included a set of tutorials (most are on the web already) it could make quite a big contribution to educating people about Linux/Unix culture.
I'm thinking about developers and power users here, who might want to experiment with Perl, Unix scripting, GIMP, and other handy open source tools. Of course, it might be better in the long run to just install Linux, but incremental upgrades are a big reason why Windows won over OS/2 (you could try Windows 3.x but retreat to the safety of DOS without problems). Now people are running native mode Windows (NT and 2000) because it is more stable, faster, etc - why not make an incremental 'Linux tools on Windows' setup, allowing upgrade to true Linux later? Ideally, someone would take Cygwin and a bunch of other tools, and put them on a single CD including much of what's in a current Linux distro. I end up doing this on some systems, but a ready-made CD with installer would be much easier and more complete - no more systems with Cygwin but without Perl...
The majority of users in business have to use Windows on their desktop/laptop and would get in trouble if they installed Linux, particularly if the multiboot install messed up and stopped Windows booting. Having an open source distro for Windows would be a great way to provide some benefits... 'Linux for Windows' with an easy upgrade to 'true Linux'.
If you're going to introduce people to a whole new world, show them the right one and not your narrow little Linux biased view.
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My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
It all comes down to perception. If the real owner of the system (Dad, Boss, whatever) perceives non-Windows OS's to be harder to use, then he will never approve changing the OS on his systems. Also remember, people hate change.
A good way to win someone over would be to take an extra system, or get approval to create a dual-boot box, and demonstrate Linux. Also, you would need to explain the philosophy of Open Source. That should at least get him to approve Linux for your own use, especially if you are passionate about it.
I have to concur here. I recently installed CygWin on a Win98 box and it's pretty impressive. Furthermore, you only listed the basic utilities that get installed. By default, you also get gcc, make, autoconf/automake, Python, Perl, CVS (In my copy, there's a strange CVS bug, where it performs the intended operation and hangs...), etc.
Many tarballs simply work when you configure&&make&&make install, too. I installed CURL without a single problem.
I got X working, but... it's weird. I didn't find it useful enough. I can't run X apps along with Win32 apps like you can with some commercial Win32 X servers.
No biggie. The other thing is that I couldn't compile mc. For some reason, I need GTK installed to compile a console app. There's no configure option for "just compile *real* mc and not that terrible WinExplorer ripoff that shares only a name with mc."
VMWare is a good way to go, whether it's Linux on Windows or windows on Linux. I'm using Cygwin on my Win2K laptop and there are still a lot of issues with speed, program compilation, etc.
"Nothing was broken, and it's been fixed." -- Jon Carroll
What are you talking about? How hard is "apt-get install " A person does not have to "acquire, decompress, compile, and install Linux applications", anything necessary can be done for you.
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
It is possible to install an awfull lot of GNU/Open Source programs on Windows.
The hard part is spending the time to track down clones of the software you want, or software that is good in its own right.
I suppose the biggest thing you need to think about is the kind of software you want:
Start at one of the meta-repositories, such as Freshmeat, or GNUSoftware.com - and search around.
With enough time, and patience, you can go a very long way..
Steve
---
If you say "Click setup.exe", It ain't gonna do squat, because they will need to double click :-P
Freshmeat Categories:
? form_cat=230
http://freshmeat.net/browse/214/
(Microsoft/MS-DOS & Windows Sub-categories)
Sourceforge Category:
http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php
Of course, where you can't find projects to fulfill your needs, of course one would want to look at Freeware/Public Domain and Shareware programs. Although, I would hope that eventually a number of these programmers would be willing to opensource their projects.
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Freeware/
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Shareware/
I highly recommend the following Freeware (for non-commercial use) graphics viewer/editor:
http://www.irfanview.com/
There is currently a project, much like Wine to implament the Linux API's on windows:
http://line.sourceforge.net
why not just use that for most of what you need.
Nate Custer
"The poet presents his thoughts festively, on the carriage of rhythm; usually because they could not walk" Nietzsche
Actually, there's a very good reason why ordinary users (non-developers) often prefer open-source programs over other alternatives: they know that it's much less likely the program will die.
I can think of many great Mac and Windows utilities that are no longer available because the original author lost interest. However, if a program is open-source, there's a much better chance that someone will continue to maintain it.
Of course, it's silly to use an open-source program when it's simply not as good as a closed, but free, or cheap shareware program. Support open-source, but don't sacrifice productivity! For example, Audacity, the open-source audio editor I'm developing, is usable now, but doesn't have as many features as CoolEdit (yet). So if you are running Windows, and can afford CoolEdit, you're still better off buying it (of course, I love it if you use Audacity when you can and send in bug reports!).
You've already commited "the sin" of using Windows
Is there a way to get a workstation with the quality of a national brand at a reasonable price without committing such sin? Can you use an NVIDIA video card at all without committing the "sin" of installing proprietary drivers? Non-proprietary hardware is quickly becoming too expensive for consumers to afford.
so why not get the best tools that run on Windows
Because GIMP is $100 cheaper than JASC's Paint Shop Pro, its approximate equal. (Photoshop costs so much more because most of what you pay goes toward licensing the PANTONE technology for the Print... command.)
Will I retire or break 10K?
you can just as easily as the developer of the program to release a binary with some different feature
It's hard to get a proprietary software publisher to even release an out-of-print title, let alone improve it. With free software, you can fork it and pay a developer to add your feature.
Will I retire or break 10K?
How about something that starts up quickly, allows me to browse all the images in a directory at the same time
In Windows ME, Explorer.exe can already view thumbnails of images in a folder. From the View menu, choose Thumbnails. (On some Windows versions, you may have to enable thumbnail views.)
and doesn't leak memory?
In that case, forget I even mentioned Explorer. Once, on my Windows 98 laptop, it ate 400 MB of RAM.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Anyway, start at http://www.imagemagick.org/
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
I did a quick scan and it looks like no one even mentioned Star Office. The Star Office 5.2 version works quite well on windows 98 and it includes all the normal office suite type applications including some image viewing.
dzimmerm
Jumping to correct solutions slowly is better than jumping to incorrect solutions quickly.
If you AREN'T doing it for political or philosophical reason, but are merely getting the best tools for the job, there are better inexpensive/free, (closed source) tools, so use those.
I don't get it. If open source isn't better, why would anyone want to use it for political or philosophical reasons? It certainly doesn't hurt anyone to use closed source (freeware) programs.
Personally, I try to use as much open source software as is reasonable, even though I run Windows 2000. Actually, the reason I run Win2K is the same reason I run IE instead of Mozilla. I can't stand Mozilla, and I can't stand Linux as a desktop machine. But open source certainly does have a number of *practical* advantages. For one thing, you have much more assurance that there are no secret backdoors. Open source is generally more compatible with extensions and plugins. Future versions of open source software are likely to always be free. Open source is more likely to be cross platform.
Bottom line is that the amount of openness of software is a feature. It's not a black and white issue. I chose MSN Messenger over AOL Instant Messenger solely because MSN Messenger had an open protocol. Has nothing to do with politics or philosophy, I simply prefer using an instant messaging service which I can write a bot for. Eventually I hope someone will write a good open source client for it. That hasn't happened yet, though.
For those of you willing to dive head first into the open source movement, more power to you. Every 6 months or so I decide to give Linux a shot. Usually it takes about 6 months for Win2k to get so corrupted I have to reinstall it, so I install Linux for a week or so, and get so frustrated with it that I go back to Win2k. Maybe someday...
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
- You want an editor - Get VIM - Vi IMproved
Flamers spotted at six o'clock, Sir!use imagemagick for graphic viewing
- It's anarchy baby. Suck it up.
You were right up to a month or two ago, but they moved it to shareware (I don't know if they added nags, I haven't upgraded) as of 7.0 (see the FAQ for their words). It was sad, since that was the first (and only) GUI-based archiver that supported my favorite format (bzip2) and was free (gratis) to boot. I guess the dot-com/advertising-revenue fallout hit them as much as everyone else.
If you want to try installing Linux without sacrificing Windows (and you've decided against risking non-destructive repartitioning), RedHat and others (if RH does it, Mandrake surely does; I didn't look to see if Debian will do it as a default installation option) offer the ability to either install as a big FAT file (containing the ext2 filesystem) or as files on an existing FAT partition (a less optimal solution, but available if necessary). I know I've set up more than one dual-boot on computers used by average folk (it defaults to Windows after a few seconds) without any problems (though readjusting the screen when switching OSes is a pain). These ideas may be good compromises that allow you to demonstrate Linux without bringing scary (to more casual users) repartitioning into the question.
powerarchiver.com has a good gui zip program that is free but not open source.
Daniel
Embrace and Extend
You want a Cross Platform open source word processor then get Abiword. You need more power then get Star Office (and openoffice) which has all the functionality of MS Office and then some (mmm vector graphics.)
http://www.abisource.com
http://www.sun.com/staroffice
There is a graphical version of Vim availble for windows, but its a command line app so you may as well just use the copy that comes with the (full dowload of) cygwin.
Cross platform: the holy grail of software, the OS becomes irrelavant (it already is to most desktop users).
I also really like Xnview, a file viewer and thumbnail browser. It supports loads of formats (i think it uses some of the IMagick .dlls)
Use CDEX for your ripping needs, yes it supports Ogg.
Need an IDE? Try VIDE for Java or C/C++, it seems okay, have not used it myself though
http://www.objectcentral.com/vide.htm
Best of luck. Try and contribute back to open source software any way you can, most people even appreciate bug reports and criticism (try and be diplomatic).
I quite like Pingus, a lemmings clone. Its quite slow, and not yet complete but the devloper is looking for people to design more levels.
http://pingus.seul.org
Need a telnet client? No really you dont (and im not talking about the one included with windows), you need an SSH client with support for the insecure legacy protocol that is telnet. use putty.
http://www.google.com/search?q=putty
If you want realplayer support, or quicktime support your pretty much screwed. you have to at least install those apps, you could possibly get other media/video programs that use their .dlls.
Is OpenDivX;) really open? I think i heard the license was not really very open.
Wish i'd thought of posting this to Slashdot. Please get your progress included in Slashback.
I work with win2K at work but try my best to use Open Source tools whenever possible. I have found the better solution is to use vmware in windows and use all the good GPL software under Linux. Second I setup an older machine as a Redhat box as a server. (The vmware Linux uses DHCP
At home I simply use a dual boot machine for the odd game or application.
I think you will save a lot of time with this technique. Instead of hunting down older versions of applications - you can grab fairly up to date ones from your favorite distributions CD. (I use Redhat, Suse, and Debian).
Oh yeah?! Mozilla crashes on me all the time...
sulli
RTFJ.
So what's the point of open source being used on an entry level machine with Windows? It has no benefit to the user, other than taking up space on hard drives and cd roms.
Even if there was a bug that a developer was able to fix in the code, they wouldn't be able to compile it again anyway - they'd have to wait for a binary.
So I guess my question is, is there any benefit of open source to the newbie? Or even an advanced, non programmer type user?
Are you admitting that Linux is not easy enough / not ideal for the beginning user? If Windows better meets their needs, why try to force them to use Linux?
Windows at least makes an ATTEMPT to be user friendly (although it frequently fails miserably) whereas with Linux you are really on your own.
Joe Idiot, the computer user, can at least install some programs and probably a printer on Windows by reading a printed page of instructions. I don't think it can be said that Joe Idiot can figure out how to acquire, decompress, compile, and install Linux applications, without a guru looking over their shoulder.
My mom is not going to be able to figure that out. She can, however, install simple programs under Windows.
If you count "click setup.exe", I guess those are "instructions".
If you are choosing GPL/GNU/Open Source because you are making a political statement, or doing it for philosophical reasons, you shouldn't be using Windows.
If you AREN'T doing it for political or philosophical reason, but are merely getting the best tools for the job, there are better inexpensive/free, (closed source) tools, so use those.
What do you need an image viewer for? Mozilla will display gif, jpg, png. What else do you need?
where there's fish, there's cats
Since when was VMWare open source?
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
No, he wants VI[M].
HTH...
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
the Zip-Program looks kinda cool and jcdsee isn't bad overall. Now why I'm doing this: Mainly I'm currently waiting for my dad giving me the permission to install Linux on all PCs in our Network. I played around with Debian Potato, Caldera OpenLinux Beta and Suse 7.0 Evaluation, but they did'nt statisfy me overall. So I decided to stay with Windows (with OpenSource) until I have the permission from my dad and chosen a good distribution (RedHat's or Suse's newest). X
Boycot? Blackout? Subscriptions?
I don't care!
one word. vmware.